Haruka Ashida, 2016

Hannah Dewhirst, 2017

Doug Skidmore, 2012

Architecture

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Department Philosophy

The Architecture department at Cranbrook fundamentally challenges and repositions space, design, production, and meaning.

Department Philosophy

The Architecture department at Cranbrook fundamentally challenges and repositions space, design, production, and meaning.

Our work seeks alternative and experimental approaches to architectural practice, inspired by the interdisciplinary context of the Academy and the creative culture of Detroit. In our immersive studio environment, students pursue independent projects alongside peers, mentors, and guests, deeply and critically engaging a range of architectural ideas, approaches, and situations. Ultimately the work aspires to shape the cultural and built environment by continually reshaping our own architectural and urban professions.

ARCHITECT IN RESIDENCE

Gretchen Wilkins

Gretchen Wilkins has been practicing and teaching architecture for nearly twenty years from locations such as Michigan, Australia, and Vietnam. Her practice includes built work, awarded competitions, funded urban research, and publications. Wilkins’s current work explores new models for density, industry, and mobility in rapidly transforming cities. Her Future Factory project in particular proposes new industrial building types for high-rise, high-volume production integrated with the public urban realm. She received her PhD in Architecture from RMIT University, and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Michigan. Wilkins is the editor of the book Distributed Urbanism: Cities after Google Earth.

Program

Who are we looking for?

Benediktas Burdulis, 2016

Program

Who are we looking for?

The department seeks independent and highly disciplined students who are invested in the pursuit of contemporary architecture and its relationship to our culture and physical world. We expect each applicant to have earned an undergraduate degree in architecture or related built environment disciplines. Understanding the seminal issues in contemporary architecture and demonstrating a personal motivation for the intensity and rigor of independent design research and graduate architectural study is also essential. Cranbrook offers exceptional students the ability to experiment with ideas and methods that are simultaneously personally compelling and relevant to the history and body of architecture. Each student is encouraged to develop a profound body of work which culminates in a thesis project.

Jane Jordan Gravely, 2012

Legacy

Cranbrook is a crucible for ideas

The Architecture department allows the individual student to develop a body of work not bound by a preconceived educational objective but in accord with their experience, passion, and skills. There are no required courses. This academic freedom is an extraordinary intellectual platform for students who possess the individual will and dedication required for establishing their own specific agenda and position in relation to architecture. This open approach to graduate architectural education has produced a legacy exemplary and experimental architectural practices. The heritage the of this place, from Saarinen to Eames to Libeskind to Hoffman, is about making, about engagement, and about experimenting with new solutions through new ways of working. To that end, idiosyncrasy is both welcome and necessarily challenged: challenged by peers; by visiting critics and scholars; by ongoing discourse and by the Architect-In-Residence.

Program

Life in the studio

Program

Life in the studio

In the department, students gather formally and informally to share their work, ideas, and meals. As a group, we also have a variety of scheduled gatherings. Essential to the development of the work are individual desk critiques with the Architect-in-Residence and more formal pin-ups where students present their work to all members of their department and interested peers from other departments. We also have reading assignments and discussion sessions on subjects that are relevant to the work happening in the studio and topics beyond the department.

Hannah Dewhirst

Architecture, 2017

Daniel Libeskind

Visiting Architects

Visitors enhance our program and introduce new ideas

Each semester we invite numerous visiting lecturers and architects who offer new points of view, review student work and often spend multiple consecutive days with students to conduct workshops. We invite established and emerging voices in order to connect us with the breadth of architectural production happening in the world.

Past Speakers

Facilities

Haruka Ashida, 2016

Facilities

The Architecture department is housed in a 6,000 square foot freestanding building with approximately 4,000 square feet of open studio space for large-scale work. The remainder of the building includes the Architect-in-Residence’s studio, an enclosed area with student desks, plotter, 2D and 3D printers, kitchen, dining room, crit space, spray booth, and materials storage. Also located within the Architecture Department are digital fabrication facilities with 4’x8’ CNC router and a digital plasma cutter. The Architecture department also contains its own dedicated woodshop in addition to having access to the Academy’s main woodshop and metal shop facilities which include an industrial-size spray booth for finishing large-scale work. Students also have access to equipment in other departments at the Academy, with a wide range of state-of-the-art woodworking, metalworking, ceramics, printmaking and photography facilities.